This reminds me of Renaissance Technologies (Jim Simons, PhD in math from uc berkeley).

He started the company in 1982 after he left academia for finance and leveraged quant models for training, they mostly hire PhD mathematicians, physicists and scientists, working on algorithms.

They have a fund called Medallion that is closed off from outsiders (you have to be an employee I believe), and it averages 66% annual gross returns (39% net after fees). Generated hundreds of billions in profits.